Invitations To Life’s Rich Banquet

If you see a uniformed soldier or veteran in a restaurant, arrange to pay for their meal. Anonymously is perfect unless you want to thank them personally and “enlist” a new friend into your life!

Calling all sun-worshippers

Solar ovens are inexpensive to buy, easy to use, and you’ll cook for free every time you use one. Solar ovens cook food without using electricity, fossil fuels, or propane. Food cooked in a solar oven retains all vitamins and minerals. Solar ovens also pasteurize water for drinking. A solar oven is perfect for your emergency supply kit. Check out www.solarovens.org to see the great work this nonprofit is doing with solar ovens in Third World countries. Go solar and really worship the sun.

Need a hug?

Be an indiscriminate hugger. When I first moved to California, I was a bit taken aback by all the hugging. Now, I love it. Be a hugger.  A hug is a mutual act of love and affection that induces feelings of comfort, contentment and security.  Hugs are one of the must beautifully human things we can do. 

What can you contribute to the “Gift Economy”

Free markets are one of the benefits of the bumpy economy wherein people figured out ways to liven in cooperation. It is one of my absolute favorite examples of a gift economy, where people come together with items to give away or share. A free market can move around freely and is a lot easier to realize than a free box. The Really Really Free Market (www.reallyreally free.org) is a great prototype. It is a pure gift economy where no money changes hands. Participants simply bring their offerings and display them communally.

People also bring their expertise and talents to share: lawyers, musicians, jugglers, gardeners, ecologists, hairdressers, tarot readers, and cookie bakers are all there enjoying this unique marketplace. The free market constitutes an entirely different economic system that can provide as much diversity as the market economy, and for free!

The Really Really Free Market website lists 34 regular free markets happening in states across the US and another 10 or so worldwide in places like Perth, Australia. Yours could be the next.

And Don’t Forget the Senseless Acts of Beauty!

Ann Herbert, the poet artist who inspired Random Acts of Kindness, also implored us to add prettiness to the world.  There are so many ways to do this, plant flowers, pick up trash, and paint a lovely mural for the entire neighborhood’s pleasure. 

What beauty can you bring to the world

Be a Fixer-Upper

Did you know weeding is good therapy?

Assist seniors near you with tasks like raking, shoveling, or doing minor home repairs through Volunteers of America’s Safety of Seniors Handyman Program (voa.org). I pull my 98 year-old neighbor’s weeds and it is good exercise for me, beautifies the neighborhood and she appreciates the weekly attention she and her yard enjoy!

No strings attached

Write down the things that someone has given you, no strings attached, for which you are grateful. It can be an old sofa, some sound advice, or a lift to the airport. Now list ten things that you would like to give someone yourself, and see how many of those things you can cross off in a week.

Examples:

Drive a friend to the airport

Carry groceries for an elder to their car

Baby-sit for a relative

Buy a friend a cup of coffee

Volunteer at a soup kitchen